0:00:00.099,0:00:15.346
34C3 Intro playing
0:00:15.346,0:00:21.790
Herald: Organisational Structures for[br]Sustainable Free Software Development.
0:00:21.790,0:00:27.090
Title says it all in my opinion and I[br]think this is a very important topic.
0:00:27.090,0:00:32.464
The talk will be held by Mo, who has[br]experience with dozens of free software
0:00:32.467,0:00:38.065
projects and funding sources.[br]As a funder and recipient of grants,
0:00:38.065,0:00:43.492
contracts and donations. The stage is[br]yours, give a big hand
0:00:43.492,0:00:45.693
and round of applause for mo please.
0:00:45.693,0:00:49.827
applause
0:00:49.827,0:00:57.769
mo: Hello everyone, nice rainy 4th day of[br]Congress. Yes I'm going to talk about
0:00:57.769,0:01:02.844
organizational structures. What I mean by[br]that and why am I talking about this?
0:01:02.844,0:01:09.649
I was invited to submit a talk about open[br]source funding and they cut me short. They
0:01:09.649,0:01:14.829
gave me instead of the 60 minutes that I[br]offered they gave me 30 minutes. So now
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I'm cutting out all the part that is[br]actually talking about funding. Because I
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think before you can go and even speak[br]about funding you need to understand that
0:01:24.730,0:01:29.729
funding can be dangerous, money can be[br]very destructive for open source projects.
0:01:29.729,0:01:37.299
And in order to be prepared for kind of[br]the next part of my talk that you're not
0:01:37.299,0:01:43.060
going to hear today. I want to talk a bit[br]more about organizational structures and
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another alternative title of this talk[br]could be open source governance so even
0:01:48.829,0:01:58.060
more dry than the previous title. Before I[br]go into detail of: why am I giving this
0:01:58.060,0:02:06.640
talk? Who am I? Why do I think I have some[br]experience with all these topics? Some
0:02:06.640,0:02:12.630
caution, some trigger warning as you've[br]might have experienced I'm using open
0:02:12.630,0:02:18.530
source and free software exchangeably in[br]this talk and I know this can cause a lot
0:02:18.530,0:02:24.780
of uproar. People can die and I don't want[br]anyone's feeling to get hurt I can go into
0:02:24.780,0:02:31.190
detail about why I'm doing this and why[br]I'm using this interchangeably. Both for
0:02:31.190,0:02:36.110
the aspects of the licensing where it[br]classically would use kind of open-source
0:02:36.110,0:02:44.010
licenses as well as for all the open[br]source principles and guiding guidelines
0:02:44.010,0:02:48.930
for the development, the collaboration and[br]everything that is happening on
0:02:48.930,0:02:54.690
organizational level. So bear with me. If[br]you're a free software person I'm your
0:02:54.690,0:02:55.744
friend.
0:02:57.276,0:03:03.180
So a bit about me. In 2010 I was[br]studying computer science at the Technical
0:03:03.180,0:03:08.590
University Dresden and as one of my side[br]projects near the end of the studies I
0:03:08.590,0:03:14.070
started something called torservers.net .[br]Torservers.net is a network of
0:03:14.070,0:03:18.630
organizations so we started with the first[br]organization in Germany a non-profit
0:03:18.630,0:03:24.060
members Association. And the goal of this[br]network of organizations is to run Tor
0:03:24.060,0:03:30.580
infrastructure. So over the years we've[br]grown this network from this single
0:03:30.580,0:03:36.570
organization in Germany to 22[br]organizations in 15 countries. Most of
0:03:36.570,0:03:40.730
these organizations have been set up[br]specifically for this purpose to run
0:03:40.730,0:03:48.350
network infrastructure. And most of them[br]are also charitable nonprofits so I kind
0:03:48.350,0:03:53.140
of accidentally learned a lot about the[br]the differences between the different
0:03:53.140,0:04:03.530
countries. On how they look at charitable[br]law and stuff like that. In 2013 I came
0:04:03.530,0:04:08.400
across a pretty new foundation the[br]Renewable Freedom Foundation it was set up
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in 2012 by Georg Chef the then newspaper[br]owner of the Donaukurier in Ingolstadt, so
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it's a daily newspaper and he started a[br]foundation with the goal to protect and
0:04:21.350,0:04:27.650
preserve civil liberties in the digital[br]space. And ever since we've been working
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with dozens of organizations and dozens of[br]projects across the whole sphere of
0:04:32.250,0:04:39.530
anything that you can basically see at the[br]Congress. And we we are a small foundation
0:04:39.530,0:04:47.310
so we had to find our purpose in this[br]space. And we are focusing mostly on
0:04:47.310,0:04:54.190
organizational development, taking away[br]burden from people that set out to realize
0:04:54.190,0:05:01.460
their goals and in order to realize your[br]goals you sometimes have to do stuff that
0:05:01.460,0:05:08.880
you don't want to do and we help with[br]that. And this led to the creation of a
0:05:08.880,0:05:15.161
new entity in 2016 the Center for the[br]cultivation of Technology. Which is a non-
0:05:15.161,0:05:22.410
profit limited liability company in[br]Germany and a GGmbH and I will go back to
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that and mention it later in this talk. So[br]why are we here? What are we talking about?
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I cut my talk short, I mentioned this.[br]A lot of the stuff that you're going
0:05:36.280,0:05:41.191
to see are basically references to outside[br]material. This is a complex topic and I
0:05:41.191,0:05:46.170
encourage you to look at the references[br]and pick them up. They should be now
0:05:46.170,0:05:51.480
listed in the Fahrplan for this event. So[br]you don't have to take pictures or
0:05:51.480,0:05:57.540
anything of this or follow the video to[br]hunt the references they're all linked on
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the website. And my goal for this talk is[br]that there's a growing number of people in
0:06:04.720,0:06:10.930
our space that think critically about[br]funding. That also see that more and more
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funding is coming to this space and that[br]we need to become better at at organizing
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and learning and collectively sharing our[br]experiences with funders with funding
0:06:23.580,0:06:30.040
entities. How to write grants and stuff[br]like that and if at the end of this talk
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maybe one or two people come up with to me[br]and become part of that network that would
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be great, that that's my hope for this[br]talk.
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So let's start on April 7th 2014. I
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think you all well recognize this logo.[br]This was one of the first times where kind
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of in a marketing experiment people[br]described a weakness in OpenSSL. This is
0:06:56.571,0:07:02.160
heartbleed. And heartbleed kicked off[br]quite a bit of activities. There was a
0:07:02.160,0:07:07.250
blog post by the OpenSSL developers[br]basically how they're not getting any
0:07:07.250,0:07:14.800
funding to do their work properly. And also[br]it kicked off a lot of other research in
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this area about how can we actually[br]support open source.
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One of the most prominent figures
0:07:22.959,0:07:27.424
that is walking around[br]talking about these topics is Nagia Eghbal
0:07:28.610,0:07:35.492
this is like three references that I feel[br]are very important to to look at. The
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unstructured labor behind our digital[br]infrastructure was a report published in
0:07:39.230,0:07:47.010
July 2016. I picked out another short talk[br]of her rebuilding the cathedral at the
0:07:47.010,0:07:54.370
Strange Loop Conference. And she's[br]maintaining a sort of a list of funding
0:07:54.370,0:08:00.080
opportunities so she's comparing the[br]different ways to to get opensource funded
0:08:00.080,0:08:05.300
so if you're coming only for that part[br]take a look at that list: "The Lemonade
0:08:05.300,0:08:12.770
Stand". Mozilla also did quite a bit of[br]research they're as you know a fairly
0:08:12.770,0:08:17.640
large organization handling a lot of[br]volunteers and a lot of volunteer
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contributions. We also know that there's a[br]lot of controversy around how well they
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manage this and in order to improve they[br]commissioned a few studies, one of the
0:08:32.046,0:08:38.719
studies was done by Stanford in 2009. How[br]do you actually work with volunteers
0:08:38.719,0:08:42.729
basically the topic always is how do you[br]scale and how do you keep volunteers
0:08:42.729,0:08:46.800
excited around your project and[br]contributors. There's an interesting
0:08:46.800,0:08:53.430
Community Survey that I invite you to look[br]at and there's a more extensive report
0:08:53.430,0:09:00.490
published in 2016 about the motivations of[br]contributors to open source and I will
0:09:00.490,0:09:07.360
come back to this because this is exactly[br]the crucial part when you transition from
0:09:07.360,0:09:13.930
a project that has been run on volunteer[br]basis or that has some people involved
0:09:13.930,0:09:19.309
that managed to contribute to the project.[br]And how to grow your project and keep that
0:09:19.309,0:09:25.850
spirit up and and be inclusive as a[br]community. Kind of the most famous and the
0:09:25.850,0:09:32.882
most relevant reference here is Jono[br]Bacon. Not necessarily this book. This is
0:09:32.883,0:09:38.240
a good book, it's a lengthy book, but he[br]also gave a lot of different talks and
0:09:38.240,0:09:45.399
he's giving seminars about this. And I[br]highly recommend his stuff. I put a small
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note at the bottom: This book is not an[br]instruction manual because it is an
0:09:49.339,0:09:55.670
instruction manual. And I don't like that[br]style so try to read it and read
0:09:55.670,0:09:59.350
in between the lines. There's a[br]lot of takeaways that you can have from
0:09:59.350,0:10:05.569
this book that are -- that you won't get if[br]you follow it line by line. I think that
0:10:05.569,0:10:10.101
many people demand an instruction manual[br]for how to manage communities and then you
0:10:10.101,0:10:15.939
end up with that kind of writing. But I[br]still think that this is kind of the most
0:10:15.939,0:10:24.410
valuable book describing the motivations[br]of opensource developers. He talks a lot
0:10:24.410,0:10:29.759
about like creating a sense of belonging[br]in the community. That you need a shared
0:10:29.759,0:10:36.269
belief in the project and that you will[br]need to have opportunity to contribute on
0:10:36.269,0:10:43.629
an equal basis. So this is the[br]announcement of the core infrastructure
0:10:43.629,0:10:48.779
initiative by the Linux Foundation that is[br]only roughly like two or three weeks after
0:10:48.779,0:10:56.170
heartbleed. So they managed to find some[br]commercial companies to bootstrap a
0:10:56.170,0:11:02.255
program that would support open source[br]infrastructure and of course the first
0:11:02.255,0:11:11.309
software that they supported with this and[br]are still supporting is OpenSSL. And I
0:11:11.309,0:11:15.980
will just briefly mention a bunch of[br]funding opportunities and a bunch of ways
0:11:15.980,0:11:22.420
how open-source projects might be able to[br]get some funding. To show that there's
0:11:22.420,0:11:28.990
been quite a lot of movement in these[br]areas. The P that you can see here is the
0:11:28.990,0:11:37.502
German prototype fund, that's the German[br]Ministry of Education and Research that is
0:11:37.502,0:11:45.490
supporting this project. So there is[br]German federal government money that is
0:11:45.490,0:11:51.009
used to fund open-source development and I[br]encourage everyone of you to check out the
0:11:51.009,0:11:56.079
prototype fund website and look at the[br]previous rounds of projects that they've
0:11:56.079,0:12:02.749
been supporting because I think it's an[br]excellent selection. I listed a bunch of
0:12:02.749,0:12:07.410
others I'm not going to go more into[br]detail about the funders that's for a
0:12:07.410,0:12:13.559
second talk, a separate talk, but you can[br]find these resources like, I picked out
0:12:13.559,0:12:18.819
tools specifically the snowdrift wiki the[br]market research they did, that Aaron did
0:12:18.819,0:12:23.889
is really excellent into the different[br]ways of funding. And also we maintain a
0:12:23.889,0:12:31.149
huge list of funding sources that's, I[br]think, around 300 foundations listed there,
0:12:31.149,0:12:36.439
not all of them fund open source[br]technology. But since we are active in a
0:12:36.439,0:12:44.130
more broader space of like digital[br]everything you will find a lot of material
0:12:44.130,0:12:48.860
there. One thing that I want to[br]specifically pick out and highlight
0:12:48.860,0:12:55.449
because it hasn't been talked about before[br]not that I know of. Is a program that is
0:12:55.449,0:13:01.620
currently in its phase of accepting[br]applications. With a wonderful name of
0:13:01.620,0:13:10.319
ICT-24-2018-2019, it's a European[br]Commission call for participation. For the
0:13:10.319,0:13:19.040
next-generation Internet. And this is[br]relevant and interesting because the way
0:13:19.040,0:13:27.239
they're framing this call will show you[br]quite clearly that they are interested in
0:13:27.239,0:13:34.529
the kind of technologies that get built by[br]our communities. And sometimes the
0:13:34.529,0:13:40.009
language is kind of funny and the[br]terminology is something that you have to
0:13:40.009,0:13:46.319
get used to. But I like it it's kind of[br]human centric openness, cooperation across
0:13:46.319,0:13:51.759
borders, decentralization, inclusiveness,[br]protection of privacy kind of that's
0:13:51.759,0:13:59.360
that's the values that also we stand for.[br]And in this program the the research and
0:13:59.360,0:14:04.470
innovation actions that this is going to[br]fund should encourage when relevant open
0:14:04.470,0:14:08.250
source software, open hardware design,[br]access to data, standardization
0:14:08.250,0:14:15.410
activities. So everything that kind of our[br]communities have been doing and want to be
0:14:15.410,0:14:19.269
doing so this is really a great[br]opportunity and we will see how this will
0:14:19.269,0:14:25.529
end up because, and now I'm coming to the[br]to the crucial point of this call. It is a
0:14:25.529,0:14:30.279
call for intermediaries so you're not[br]supposed to apply as a project directly
0:14:30.279,0:14:34.440
for that kind of money because that just[br]too huge the amount of money that they're
0:14:34.440,0:14:43.420
giving out in total budget just for this[br]call is 21.5 million just in 2018. So as
0:14:43.420,0:14:50.489
intermediaries you can apply for these[br]fundings and they're split across three
0:14:50.489,0:14:54.910
three different topics. One topic is[br]privacy technologies.The other is peer-to-
0:14:54.910,0:15:00.319
peer technologies. And the third is kind[br]of data mining big data stuff. And these
0:15:00.319,0:15:08.499
intermediaries then are responsible to[br]split up that funding and give it away to
0:15:08.499,0:15:13.421
third parties and this is something that[br]Commission calls usually exclude. Usually
0:15:13.421,0:15:19.089
they require you to develop everything in-[br]house and make it very hard to involve
0:15:19.089,0:15:24.730
external participants. So this will be[br]interesting to follow, the deadline is in
0:15:24.730,0:15:34.239
April and sometime maybe during the next[br]year we will see who got this money and
0:15:34.239,0:15:36.737
how they're going to redistribute this.
0:15:38.539,0:15:42.839
Now, for dealing with money I put this nice
0:15:42.839,0:15:52.197
little piggy bank as a kind of contrast to[br]how dangerous actually funding can be if
0:15:52.197,0:15:58.399
you don't think about it. So when you want[br]to deal with money and I'm probably not
0:15:58.399,0:16:04.439
telling you any news as a as a project you[br]have to decide whether you want to start
0:16:04.439,0:16:09.809
some kind of legal entity to help you with[br]that because at certain points you don't
0:16:09.809,0:16:15.699
just don't want to have it go through one[br]individual. So you have the option of
0:16:15.699,0:16:20.559
creating your own organization or you find[br]an organization -- an existing organization
0:16:20.559,0:16:25.389
to partner with. In the hopes that it's[br]kind of less bureaucratic, you already have
0:16:25.389,0:16:29.119
some kind of infrastructure, there's[br]hopefully already some accounting
0:16:29.119,0:16:35.230
happening and all that stuff. So let's[br]look at the two different options. The one
0:16:35.230,0:16:40.389
option starting your own is something that[br]a lot of people feel that is the way to go
0:16:40.389,0:16:46.329
because they believe that they stay in[br]control, right. It's your own
0:16:46.329,0:16:53.910
thing, you're not depending on some[br]external weird partner organization. But I
0:16:53.910,0:17:00.166
I am warning from this model because[br]you're actually creating an organism when
0:17:00.166,0:17:05.180
you create an organization you create some[br]organism and that organism develops its
0:17:05.180,0:17:12.699
own life and then my experience with many[br]projects is that over time the
0:17:12.699,0:17:17.839
organization swallows its people. And[br]you're contributing to something that you
0:17:17.839,0:17:24.511
set out to be doing and in this[br]organization. Without necessarily taking a
0:17:24.511,0:17:29.919
step back and deciding when to let go of[br]an organization or when to restructure it.
0:17:29.919,0:17:35.769
It will defend itself. So, how do you do[br]this? What you see here is a very
0:17:35.769,0:17:43.909
elaborate bylaws or chapter or the[br]articles of creation of your organization.
0:17:43.909,0:17:48.640
And there's typically two ways to do this.[br]One you go and hire a lawyer and they come
0:17:48.640,0:17:56.230
up with some draft document for you. This[br]is kind of very often the way that people
0:17:56.230,0:18:03.470
do it in the US. In Europe mostly what you[br]do is you copy something, you compile it
0:18:03.470,0:18:07.929
yourself. So in Europe you don't need a[br]lawyer to create organizations. You're not
0:18:07.929,0:18:15.590
expected to get a lawyer involved. So what[br]happens then is that you look around you
0:18:15.590,0:18:21.179
compare different articles from from[br]similar organizations and then quite often
0:18:21.179,0:18:26.130
you copy different parts of these[br]documents together to form your own
0:18:26.130,0:18:33.929
organization and the problem in both cases[br]is that here what happens is that you are
0:18:33.929,0:18:39.280
getting some template that has governance[br]structure described. That does not
0:18:39.280,0:18:43.520
necessarily match the governance structure[br]of your project and it does not
0:18:43.520,0:18:48.350
necessarily match the values and the[br]spirit of a collaborative environment for
0:18:48.350,0:18:54.744
open-source development. And this is even[br]more dangerous the kind of copypasta.
0:18:54.744,0:19:00.529
Because you usually end up with a document[br]that is in itself incoherent because some
0:19:00.529,0:19:05.480
of the articles at the beginning[br]contradict some articles coming later and
0:19:05.480,0:19:12.870
when you talk to lawyers that see they see[br]this over and over again. So this is not
0:19:12.870,0:19:17.399
something that just happens sometimes but[br]this is the usual case that this is not
0:19:17.399,0:19:22.800
even coherent in itself. Let alone[br]coherent and compatible with how you
0:19:22.800,0:19:30.340
actually want to run the project. And this[br]is this leads to kind of a feeling that
0:19:30.340,0:19:34.710
you have to have these two worlds you you[br]think that there are some legal
0:19:34.710,0:19:41.550
requirements for your organization that[br]that does not exactly fit the spirit. But
0:19:41.550,0:19:49.000
there is opportunity there there is[br]opportunity there to to express the actual
0:19:49.000,0:19:55.179
governance that you have in your project[br]and even like probably unwritten right you
0:19:55.179,0:20:01.250
have some idea of how you want to work[br]together. So I caution people don't just
0:20:01.250,0:20:05.690
copy and paste something don't go to your[br]lawyer and say I want to create a non-
0:20:05.690,0:20:11.309
profit or I want to create a company[br]because you're getting the cheap kind of
0:20:11.309,0:20:17.970
capitalist model of an organization. I[br]call this the stack overflow effect right
0:20:17.970,0:20:22.919
it's copy pasting stuff from stackoverflow[br]and importing it and bootstrapping an
0:20:22.919,0:20:28.389
organization like that. The alternative[br]that you have is using a fiscal sponsor
0:20:28.389,0:20:33.350
that's the professional term for looking[br]for partner organization and partnering
0:20:33.350,0:20:38.620
with an existing organization. And in the[br]free software space there's a bunch of
0:20:38.620,0:20:45.120
those that you can pick from and all of[br]these include some guidance along the way
0:20:45.120,0:20:50.809
especially if they're made for open source[br]projects and if they're already
0:20:50.809,0:20:56.640
experienced with other projects. So this[br]is a newspaper article that in the LWN
0:20:56.640,0:21:00.580
article. chooseafoundation.com is a[br]website that compares a bunch of the most
0:21:00.580,0:21:05.960
prominent ones in the US. I want to[br]highlight the Commons Conservancy. The
0:21:05.960,0:21:10.799
Commons Conservancy is a bit different[br]model it isn't actually a fiscal sponsor
0:21:10.799,0:21:16.820
and it's it is a way to define your own[br]governance so independently of what kind
0:21:16.820,0:21:21.950
of legal entities you're going to use. You[br]can use the material that the Commons
0:21:21.950,0:21:29.149
Conservancy is producing to pick and[br]choose governance models. So they have
0:21:29.149,0:21:34.820
documents about forking organizations for[br]example. So you not only forking the
0:21:34.820,0:21:40.070
source code but really forking the[br]organization and what happens to the
0:21:40.070,0:21:46.300
assets that the organization has domain[br]names trademarks and stuff like that. So
0:21:46.300,0:21:51.090
ultimately in any case you will have to[br]talk about this ugly topic and that's why
0:21:51.090,0:21:57.779
I use this kind of very ugly slide to talk[br]about governance because that's something
0:21:57.779,0:22:02.850
that kind of the projects usually that I[br]work with are loose collectives, are
0:22:02.850,0:22:09.220
politically motivated, come with anarchy[br]spirit, are kind of against any form of
0:22:09.220,0:22:14.340
formal governance . Which is not exactly[br]what anarchism is about but that's a
0:22:14.340,0:22:19.659
separate talk all together. Let's stick to[br]this. So what we have in open source
0:22:19.659,0:22:27.110
actually is a lot of tools that have been[br]developed, that implement the governance
0:22:27.110,0:22:34.750
models without it becoming kind of a long[br]written statements. So when you think
0:22:34.750,0:22:40.790
about issue trackers, when you think about[br]mailing lists the way you interact on code
0:22:40.790,0:22:48.409
with with revision control systems all of[br]that is an implementation of inherently of
0:22:48.409,0:22:57.049
a governance model in open-source. And we[br]are lacking those tools in the other areas
0:22:57.049,0:23:02.700
that become relevant for governance and[br]this is basically what I want to highlight
0:23:02.700,0:23:08.950
in this talk so. But how do we go from[br]here? How do we take all these unwritten
0:23:08.950,0:23:17.929
rules and this kind of spiritual or[br]ethical guidelines that that we come out
0:23:17.929,0:23:21.799
and this will be very different from[br]organization to organization. How do we
0:23:21.799,0:23:25.909
turn them into something that other people[br]can follow? And this is important
0:23:25.909,0:23:31.960
especially during the phase where you[br]start receiving money because then you
0:23:31.960,0:23:35.870
have to make a decision on how to spend[br]that money and you can still make the
0:23:35.870,0:23:39.289
decision collectively. But over time you[br]bring in people maybe from different
0:23:39.289,0:23:42.460
spaces and they're coming with a different[br]background, they're coming with a
0:23:42.460,0:23:47.530
different set of ethical principles. And[br]they might be spoiled already by working
0:23:47.530,0:23:52.399
in some bullshit company for a long time[br]and then they come and they take that,
0:23:52.399,0:23:58.250
these these principles that they've[br]learned into your nice collaborative
0:23:58.250,0:24:03.070
environment. And there's there's a[br]tendency and I see that in many places
0:24:03.070,0:24:08.980
that as organizations grow up there's this[br]divide between the principles for the
0:24:08.980,0:24:13.750
software development side and the[br]principles of how the organization is run.
0:24:13.750,0:24:22.360
A very good book that talks about this in[br]a non-technical environment about
0:24:22.360,0:24:28.960
organizations is this book. Frederic[br]Laloux "Reinventing Organizations" and for
0:24:28.960,0:24:34.669
me this is very inspiring as a blueprint[br]for how you can actually copy the model,
0:24:34.669,0:24:41.710
you will find a lot of material here where[br]you can see directly how it relates to the
0:24:41.710,0:24:48.399
open source way of doing things. I picked[br]out the quote "Impressive! Brilliant! This
0:24:48.399,0:24:53.010
book is a world changer!" and not because[br]I believe that it is but because actually
0:24:53.010,0:25:00.941
as a bit of a warning because it's written[br]a very enthusiastic way. So sometimes you
0:25:00.941,0:25:06.520
have to kind of let the author go and and[br]and but still continue reading there's a
0:25:06.520,0:25:11.200
lot of good thinking material in there and[br]one thing I want to pick out is the
0:25:11.200,0:25:15.259
sections where they talk about the[br]different governance models in terms of
0:25:15.259,0:25:21.240
hierarchical structures compared to[br]consensus structures. And the third and
0:25:21.240,0:25:27.019
the model that is highlighted across this[br]book is what they call the advice process.
0:25:27.019,0:25:30.620
And when you look at the advice process in[br]that book it's basically what our
0:25:30.620,0:25:35.299
communities know as rough consensus. So if[br]you have an idea you have the full
0:25:35.299,0:25:40.750
authority to execute that idea. But you[br]are you are forced to get input, you're
0:25:40.750,0:25:47.200
forced to get advice from the outside so[br]the only way to violate kind of rules is
0:25:47.200,0:25:51.320
that you're not reaching out to relevant[br]people for advice and relevant people are
0:25:51.320,0:25:55.080
the people that you work with are the[br]people that might have some good ideas
0:25:55.080,0:26:00.290
around that topic. But they cannot block[br]you the authority stays with you for that
0:26:00.290,0:26:07.990
decision. There's another really relevant[br]section especially given what's happening
0:26:07.990,0:26:13.389
here with code of conducts and and all[br]this. Is the clear the need of clearly
0:26:13.389,0:26:18.460
documented and explicit decision-making[br]processes. In a way that is compatible
0:26:18.460,0:26:22.799
with that kind of thinking that you are a[br]self-organized group and yourself we want
0:26:22.799,0:26:27.150
to strengthen the self organization in[br]that organization. And there's really
0:26:27.150,0:26:32.750
interesting material in there that could[br]avoid some of the weird code of conduct
0:26:32.750,0:26:36.909
stuff that has happened in our[br]communities. So I really encourage you to
0:26:36.909,0:26:43.029
at least look at that section of the book.[br]Another interesting thing like they have a
0:26:43.029,0:26:46.770
they had that he's looking at something[br]some comparing some different entities
0:26:46.770,0:26:52.679
that use this model. In in in their own[br]ways and one of them is a multinational
0:26:52.679,0:26:58.990
corporation in like active in 80 countries[br]or something with like 20,000 employees.
0:26:58.990,0:27:02.759
And still they have this principle that[br]anyone in the organization can spend as
0:27:02.759,0:27:06.669
much money as they want. As long as[br]they're following that advice principle
0:27:06.669,0:27:14.120
that I mentioned earlier. Ao this is just[br]something to inspire you when you think
0:27:14.120,0:27:17.399
about like managing money in an[br]organization and there's a bunch of
0:27:17.399,0:27:24.899
projects starting to appear that are[br]trying to apply open-source principles to
0:27:24.899,0:27:31.880
this. One is Co budget you're invited to[br]look at that. The other more known is open
0:27:31.880,0:27:35.990
collective, open collective you can sign[br]up as an open-source project people can
0:27:35.990,0:27:41.190
donate to your project and you can also[br]establish some transparency. Because a lot
0:27:41.190,0:27:45.530
of time you lose that transparency of like[br]what is actually happening with that
0:27:45.530,0:27:51.200
money, and who has access to that money[br]and who can spend that money. Just briefly
0:27:51.200,0:27:55.860
something about funding sources I already[br]mentioned the "Lemonade Stand" list.
0:27:55.860,0:28:02.620
There's like the three sections of like[br]small donor, private foundations, public
0:28:02.620,0:28:09.220
funding. There's a lot to be said about[br]small donors but my when people ask me
0:28:09.220,0:28:14.250
about crowdfunding and campaigning and[br]stuff like that I I'm very reluctant about
0:28:14.250,0:28:19.539
that because it usually doesn't work. So[br]the the only thing that works in terms of
0:28:19.539,0:28:24.510
raising money from small donors is that[br]you can show the support of the community
0:28:24.510,0:28:29.679
and then get some larger donor to top that[br]up and and agree oh wow that project
0:28:29.679,0:28:36.440
really has has users. It doesn't really[br]work that well to for in most cases that
0:28:36.440,0:28:43.740
but that's very specific cases. So quickly[br]just dealing with funders some some of the
0:28:43.740,0:28:49.779
learnings that I took away from from my[br]work in the previous years. One that I'm
0:28:49.779,0:28:53.510
still struggling with is how can we make[br]this planning and writing grant
0:28:53.510,0:28:59.200
applications fun. If any one of you has[br]some exciting ideas about gamification of
0:28:59.200,0:29:06.880
of grant applications and I'm all ears.[br]And my advice is and and that's something
0:29:06.880,0:29:12.830
that also a lot of people are making[br]mistakes there is that plans change.
0:29:12.830,0:29:18.169
Right? You you you develop a plan you give[br]it to the funder it's maybe for one year
0:29:18.169,0:29:23.320
or two year grant and they expect that[br]this is going to change because it has
0:29:23.320,0:29:28.990
changed. It like there's no way that you[br]can follow that plan line by line but
0:29:28.990,0:29:36.490
there's this it's it's mostly the side of[br]the recipient that feels kind of weird
0:29:36.490,0:29:45.580
when you deviate from your plans. Do that[br]change your plans communicate this early
0:29:45.580,0:29:48.770
and not because otherwise you're creating[br]trouble at the end of the project or
0:29:48.770,0:29:55.649
you're doing stuff that you don't really[br]want to do anymore. In terms of writing
0:29:55.649,0:30:00.539
grant applications a lot of things are[br]kind of a mistake that people are doing
0:30:00.539,0:30:05.950
because they're like in the developer mode[br]of thinking. Is they think in terms of
0:30:05.950,0:30:10.710
deliverables and deliverables in terms of[br]what kind of features can we add to the
0:30:10.710,0:30:15.149
software. This is actually an art form[br]coming up with estimates for software
0:30:15.149,0:30:19.179
development I encourage everyone to look[br]into the material about software
0:30:19.179,0:30:23.970
estimation. Because it's kind of crazy I[br]cannot talk more about this because I'm
0:30:23.970,0:30:29.090
already over time but one thing that I[br]still want to mention and this is the last
0:30:29.090,0:30:34.850
slide. Is that in a lot of cases I've seen[br]that you can think about deliveries in a
0:30:34.850,0:30:38.769
completely different way. You can think[br]about deliverables in a way that is
0:30:38.769,0:30:43.779
actually supporting community growth[br]rather than just feature sets and the
0:30:43.779,0:30:47.580
metrics of success that you can define[br]there because funders want some metrics of
0:30:47.580,0:30:51.840
success demonstrated. Is the number of[br]people that are participating on your
0:30:51.840,0:30:55.080
mailing lists, the number of people you[br]have in your IRC channel that's all that
0:30:55.080,0:31:01.309
kind of stuff and redirecting some of the[br]funding to the more kind of community
0:31:01.309,0:31:06.200
oriented hackathons, running events,[br]t-shirts and all that. You know about
0:31:06.200,0:31:11.419
this, but usually in the moment of a grant[br]application that all that gets dropped and
0:31:11.419,0:31:16.590
then you're struggling keeping that up so[br]now that I'm over time I'm going to skip
0:31:16.590,0:31:29.169
like maybe a hundred of slides. And I'm[br]going to end with this slide. And thank
0:31:29.169,0:31:38.619
you.[br]Applause
0:31:38.619,0:31:43.810
Outro playing
0:31:43.810,0:31:52.000
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